This Friday I went out with my girlfriends from work to a bar called el Cubanito. This bar has an amazing live salsa band that included a singer, your typical percussion section (congas, piano, and guiro), as well as a saxophone and flute. It was honestly the best live salsa I’ve heard (sorry Habanna Village) aside from la Gran Combo in Puerto Rico. Between the 7 girls, we ordered a bottle of rum and some chasers and started drinking around 7pm….it was a fun night. In addition, the girls decided to give me a book that basically includes several hundred Paisa words with definitions. These are words that either (a) do not exist in other countries or (b) exist in other countries but have different meanings in Medellín. Considering these ladies spend much of their lunch teaching me new vocabulary, it was a very appropriate present and almost made me cry in public. It was very sweet.
The next day I had to get up at 4:30 am to go to Jardín, a 4-hour car ride. Various people recommended Jardín to Eirik and I as a wonderful town that we needed to see…so I sacrificed and got up early to start the trek. I thought it was just going to be Eirik and me in the car, but it turned out that the car was full and I ended up riding bitch for 4 hours. There was a very nice man named Alejandro, who was from Jardín, who insisted on telling me all about the city and what we should do when we get there. Plus, every time we passed through a town or over a river, he was very eager to describe its history or its importance. So not only did I ride bitch, but I also did not sleep. Oh well, as Eirik kept repeating the entire trip, you can sleep when you die. Thanks.
Eirik was kind enough to agree to a 1-hour nap when we arrived in Jardín, which was followed by breakfast with AMAZING coffee (for once). Jardín is known for growing coffee, banana, and plantain, as well as making candy. So after breakfast, we decided to get a tour of the town on a motoraton (a box on three wheels); we saw the entire town and this took a whopping 20 minutes. We saw a cemetery, the “commercial center” (i.e. one street), the metro cables, the hospital (which is made of the same material as the main church but I’m not sure why it’s a tourist attraction), the nicest hotel in Jardín (note the one that the white people were NOT at) and the dulceria.
Once we had a gotten a glimpse of the entire town it was easy to decide what we were going to do next. First we took the metro cable up to a mountain. There wasn’t a whole lot to see but there was a nice view from the next mountain over and a cute little restaurant where we could chill. The owners even let us have a banana for free J From the metro cable we decided to wander around the town and stumbled upon a shop that had homemade ice cream, so I had strawberry and Eirik had chocolate…yet again, another amazing food experience, of which there have been many.
Eirik was very intent on going to a Trucheria. A trucheria is a trout farm that rents people bamboo sticks with a hook and a string, gives you some bread as bait, and let’s you fish in their ponds. Of course, the odds are in your favor because it’s a trout farm, but it’s still fun. Eirik wanted to bet on who would catch the first fish, but considering he is from Norway I figured that might not be a safe gamble. However, I managed to not only catch the first fish, but also catch two fish before Eirik could…so I figure I won twice…and I didn’t let me him forget it. I did let Eirik kill my fish though—he admitted a sense of enjoyment from breaking the fish’s neck. So even though there was a staff person there to take care of this for us, Eirik would rush over to me (as well as a couple other complete strangers) to put the fish out of its misery. As if it wasn’t bad enough to be the only pair of whities in Jardín this particular weekend, I was with the crazy Viking that enjoys killing fish with his bare hands. Ha! When we were done fishing, we paid for the fish we caught and had it fried right there on they spot. They served it with patacón, French fries, and arepa. MmmMmm.
After our yummy meal, we went back into town to the dulceria (sweets shop) to pick up souvenirs. They had arequipe in 20 flavors, as well as candy made out of 5 fruits, cookies, jam, etc. If I didn’t have to worry about the weight limit of my bag coming back home, it would have been ON. The coffee flavored arequipe was the bomb!
Eirik and I returned back to the hotel to meet up with a tour guide to plan a trip to the famous waterfall
At 11 pm we headed to bed. Considering my long day and my lack of sleep the night prior, I feel asleep quickly. It would have been quicker had I not heard the sounds of my neighbors having sex next door…but what can you do?
The next morning we got up and met the guide in the plaza. We then had a driver take us part of the way up a mountain so we could start our trek. We were basically hiking up one of the mountains that surround Jardín. All of this land is owned by ranchers and is full of cows and some small farms, but apparently the farmers don’t have any issues with people hiking through it. There was a path around the side of the mountain and when we were about ¾ of the way up to the top, we started cutting through the farmland (and lots of cow poop) and climbing down what seemed to be a gorge that just kept getting steeper. In the gorge the flora changed too, it was more of a forest/jungle that had streams running through it. But it was cleverly hidden in the valley, had we not been with guides we would never have seen it.
The guide took us to a place that had a HUGE waterfall and a small pool. The view was amazing and the water was excruciatingly cold. However, considering I may only get one chance to do this, I decided to suck it up and at least get in for a minute. Now, you know how I feel about cold, so this was very hard for me. The water was freezing and the pool was filled with sharp rocks, yet somehow I got my whole body in the water. My feet and fingers tingled afterward and my whole body was shaking when I got out. Eirik splashed around a little more than I did; he went under the waterfall and climbed around the back of it, but I probably would’ve turned into a popsicle had I attempted that. He told me he has a cold today…I joked that his sore throat could be from all the screaming he did getting into the water! For a Viking, he did a lot of screaming. As a side note, as Eirik and I drove home from Jardín, we realized that we hadn’t seen a stream going down the hill from the waterfall…in other words, there was a huge quantity of water flowing down from the waterfall, it landed into this pool, and then there didn’t seem to be any exit for the water. This means there’s probably a dangerous hole somewhere that we were swimming around, but also a cool cave yet to be discovered!
Anyway, after freezing our booties off, we hiked back out of the gorge and to a small farmhouse up the mountain where we rested and had lunch. At this point we had been hiking for 4 hours and were glad to have the break. Our guide, Andres, managed to get fiambre brought up the mountain for us. Fiambre is a substantial portion of rice, mean, potato, yucca, and plantain cooked in a palm leaf…another incredible addition to the list of new foods that I am eating here.
After lunch, the farmer who had to take his horses to their pen, let us ride them across the hill. I believe this was partially to appease Eirik who has been dying to ride a horse since Guatepe. He got what he was asking for. You see, unlike the US or other places where they’re afraid of being sued, if you get on a horse here, they just let you go. There’s no one holding the reins or a lesson on how to slow down, stop, or navigate on the horse. Therefore, we were going down a steep hill, across a creek, and up another hill on a huge animal without much help from the farmer. I thought I was gonna die and I believe Eirik did as well, because although I do not speak Norwegian, it’s not common for him to bust out into Norwegian with me…. I’m also pretty sure that the words that were coming out of his mouth were not nice.
The next 2 hours were mostly descent from the mountain. I don’t remember anything super special happening during that part of the trip. My body seemed to be on autopilot and was just trying to get down the hill. When we finally came to a drivable road, Andres called a tax to take us the rest of the way (thank GOD) and we stopped by another trucheria where they had a panela factory. So we got to not only see how it was made, but have a desert made of fried plantain, melted panela, and cheese…heavenly! I love plantains…what a versatile starch. I could go on and on about them… I don’t understand why people are so surprised here when I tell them that I love plantain—what’s not to love? Seriously.
There wasn’t a whole lot more that happened after we got back from the trek. My cell phone was stolen and Eirik ruined his shoes during the hike…so he begged me to go out and buy him a new pair since he hadn’t brought a second pair and couldn’t leave the hotel barefoot. Ahh…the insanity of traveling with a Norwegian. Gotta love it.
This blog is getting very long, so I will cut it short here and say that I had a wonderful time in Jardín and if I were going to be in Colombia longer, I’d go back even if it was just to hang out. People were so friendly and the town was so relaxing that it would have been nice to have one more day there.
To see the pictures from this trip, click here.
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